Smoke Clear
by Lono
Summary: Sometimes, he is startled by her strength, and sometimes he conveniently forgets about it until he needs to be reminded. (Contains spoilers for "His Last Vow")


**Note/Warning**: Hello everyone. This fic contains massive spoilers for the entirety of series three of Sherlock, particularly episode three, "His Last Vow."

Here's my first contribution to our new Sherlolly canon, as it were. I was struck not only by the lack of Molly in the latter half of the episode, but also by the lack of resolution we got about Sherlock's time in the flophouse. We went from Sherlock being in hospital to Christmas, with little detail about what happened between those two events. So here's this. I hope it's okay!

**Disclaimer**: I do not own _Sherlock_ or its characters.

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**_Smoke Clear_**

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He can see the injury in her eyes as soon as she opens her door for him. Oh, he has done serious damage, alright.

"May I come in?" he asks her. His voice is scratchy with too many cigarettes; tiny crutches that burn away to ash. They brace him only for so long before he must perch another in his lips and let the nicotine reel through his blood. It only provides petty distraction from another siren's call, but it's all he allows himself. He only hopes he can get through this visit.

At first, he's not sure if she'll just slam to door in his face. When she lets it swing fully open, he is not sure whether it is to give him entry or to haul off and smack him again. He can only hope for the former, but wouldn't begrudge her the latter.

Staring at him only for a moment, she comes to a decision and shrugs. She turns away, leaving the door open, and trudges over to her settee, lowering gracelessly onto it as she looks at him impassively.

He steps into the lounge carefully, and not just because he is still sore from his gunshot wounds. Though she visited him regularly during his time in hospital, he only now feels confident to broach the hurts he managed to create before then.

He buries nervous, twitching fingers in his trouser pockets and looks down at her. "I owe you an apology."

She doesn't respond.

"Well?" he prompts.

"Well, what?" she asks, startled by his sudden request for her participation in this attempted dialogue.

He sighs, rocking back on his heels. "Do you accept?"

"Accept what?"

"My apology."

She looks around her, trying to spot her answer. He'd say it was theatrical if weren't for the genuine bafflement that flits across her face. "I'm sorry, but _what_ apology?"

Perhaps it was a bit feigned, after all.

"The one I just told you I owed you," he grits out.

Her laugh is altogether mirthless. "If you think that takes care of it, then it's probably time you left." She squares her chin and looks at him defiantly. Sometimes, he is startled by her strength, and sometimes he conveniently forgets about it until he is reminded at inopportune moments. Like now, for instance.

When will he learn, he wonders?

"No!" He doesn't mean to yell it, but it's done now, and she is still looking at him with fathomless, dark eyes. But at least she's not asking him to leave anymore.

"I'm sorry for what I said about your engagement—"

She shakes her head sharply. "That was unkind, but that's not what I'm waiting for."

"Then I apologize for taking your engagement ring to use as a ploy to break into an office.

"I wasn't even aware you did that," she says, her brow furrowed, her eyes glancing down the short hall to her bedroom. She'd stashed the ring in a table drawer in there and promptly forgotten about it. She must have offered it back to her fiancé when she broke offa their engagement, but Tom had refused it before storming out. Scruff marks from angry, stomping feet remain on the hardwood flooring.

He shuffles his feet awkwardly. "In hindsight, I do believe I told everyone that I simply bought one. But I just let myself in and helped myself to it. It's back where you'd put it now."

"That's creepy and wrong, but since I didn't know about it, obviously that's not the apology I want to hear." Her eyes meet his momentarily, before she tugs a throw pillow into her lap and starts toying with the tassels.

Clearly, he can put it off no longer.

He looks around the room, feeling his pulse sync with the tic of an antique clock on her mantle. It's deafening and yet his hearing has tunneled, too.

"Molly," he whispers, and his voice is suddenly that much more hoarse. "I am sorry I betrayed your trust and took heroin again."

Her breath shudders, but she continues to watch him, nodding at him to go on.

"It was reckless and stupid, more than anything, it was selfish."

She makes a small noise of distress. "You and I both know that addiction is not that simple."

"Yes. But I'd been strong up to that point and it was a conscientious decision, one which I made knowing full well what the consequences would be."

"Then why did you do it?"—he opens his mouth to respond, but she beats him to it—"and don't say it was for a case."

"But it was," he protests. Her eyes shutter a little at this, but before she can say anything else, he curses vehemently. "It was for a case, but I also relished the chance to use again."

He wants to look away from her face. It's once again flooded with compassion and it's more than he could ever possibly deserve.

"That rush of the needle pricking my skin, the depression of the plunger. All of stabilized me. And with it came calm and none of this damned loneliness that I can't talk myself out of." His eyes burn and his voice throbs as he speaks, but he can't stop. "All I've ever wanted was quiet, but it turns out when I got just that, it was the wrong kind and I've never had to face it before, because I didn't know it could exist."

He swipes furiously at his face, miserably embarrassed but unable to stop the tears that dribble down his cheeks.

When she opens her arms to him, he refuses to listen to the instinct that tells him to hiss some spiteful words at her and hurl himself from her warm flat and even warmer presence.

Instead, he drops heavily to his knees and shuffles over to her. She just watches him with the most painfully kind expression and waits for him. When he reaches her, he pushes the throw pillow she's been mangling aside, and buries his face in her lap. His arms wrap her hips and he shudders noiselessly.

It's an awkward pose for her, but she doesn't complain as she smoothes one hand in wide, comforting circles over his back while the fingers of her other hand dip beneath the collar of his shirt, stroking along his neck and shoulders.

She bends over him, pressing her mouth to the back of his head. "I forgive you, Sherlock," she whispers. Hot tears fall into his hair, and somehow it's an absolution.

His muscles release their tension, but he stays where he is.


End file.
